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Purpose: To explore the use of computer-based qualitative data analysis software packages. Scope: The advantages and capabilities of qualitative data analysis software are described and concerns about their effects on methods are discussed.
Findings: Advantages of using qualitative data analysis software include being freed from manual and clerical tasks, saving time, being able to deal with large amounts of qualitative data, having increased flexibility, and having improved validity and auditability of qualitative research. Concerns include increasingly deterministic and rigid processes, privileging of coding, and retrieval methods; reification of data, increased pressure on researchers to focus on volume and breadth rather than on depth and meaning, time and energy spent learning to use computer packages, increased commercialism, and distraction from the real work of analysis.
Conclusions: We recommend that researchers consider the capabilities of the package, their own computer literacy and knowledge of the package, or the time required to gain these skills, and the suitability of the package for their research. The intelligence and integrity that a researcher brings to the research process must also be brought to the choice and use of tools and analytical processes. Researchers should be as critical of the methodological approaches to using qualitative data analysis software as they are about the fit between research question, methods, and research design.
[Key words: qualitative research, computer applications, qualitative data analysis, methods]
Use of computer-based qualitative data analysis software (QDAS) has quietly revolutionized qualitative research (Fielding & Lee, 1996; Mangabeira, 1996). Many packages, with a range of capabilities, have been offered over the last two decades as qualitative researchers have sought more effective ways to manage and analyse their data. Computer programs devoted to organizing qualitative data for analysis have been available since 1984 (Tesch, 1991), when they were mainly developed by researchers computerizing their own analytical and management systems. Before that time, qualitative researchers adapted database managers and word processors to assist them in their analysis (Ross, 1994). More recently, the development and sale of QDAS packages have become increasingly subject to commercial considerations. Rather than unthinkingly using QDAS, researchers should pause and consider that technology is more than a tool. Technology requires researchers to reframe ideas about what can be done and how it is done. It also...